


screaming the name of a foreign god

by amurderof



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Character Study, Drug Addiction, F/M, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Recreational Drug Use, Religion, spirituality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 07:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6846082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amurderof/pseuds/amurderof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Amy wouldn’t have wanted me to live with her ghost,” Simon says, and next to him, Kieren makes a quiet, hurt noise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	screaming the name of a foreign god

**Author's Note:**

> i have a lot of feelings about simon monroe and religion.

The crux of it is, he still knows it’s true.

==

 

The Walkers aren’t religious folk.

There’s no prayer around the dinner table, heads bent and hands clasped, no thanks beyond those offered to Sue, well-deserved but secular. When they don’t attend mass, there’s no gossip about their souls, or what scandal may be keeping them from God’s presence.

Simon’s gathered that during the Rising everyone got a good injection of faith in Roarton, of hellfire and brimstone or as close as Anglicans can get to it. The parish church served as a rallying point, a means of consuming the bile vomited up by the Human Volunteer Force and Vicar Oddie. (He knows that Jem was a regular attendee, though he’s unsure if this has to do with any actual faith — he and Jem have a cautious relationship on the good days; they’ve not yet taken the time to talk in-depth of religion.)

He wonders what the Walkers thought when they lowered their son into the ground: if Steve clung to the desperate hope of an afterlife; if Sue consoled herself with knowledge that his suicide wasn’t a sin.

If they did it knowing that it was the end, that their son’s consciousness had disappeared from existence like the flame of a snuffed candle.

If they have an explanation for the Rising that isn’t pulled from Revelations.

==

 

The bungalow after Amy’s death is a mausoleum.

It had seemed one already, when Amy had first let him in upon their arrival in Roarton, her gran’s knickknacks and afghans stacked across all open surfaces — but Amy had placed a hand alongside a painting of the Virgin Mary in layers of blue and tilted her head towards him, said, “Isn’t she a beaut? Since I was a wee one, I’ve been brokenhearted that I’ve no hope of looking so lovely in robes.”

It had been a museum, then, Amy taking him on guided tours throughout their time spent there, when he wasn’t devoted to the congregation. She’d pick up a porcelain sheep and tell him about the absolutely nasty opinion her gran had of the Welsh; she’d tie back the lace curtains in her gran’s bedroom, the one he slept in now, and talk about how the lace was hand-tatted, but nobody did that anymore because it was a waste of time, and that her gran would be right  _ livid _ if she’d heard her say that; she’d laughed for, God, hours when they’d opened the refrigerator to store their neurotriptyline and there’d been three unopened jars of capers. Simon hadn’t ever gotten the story for that one.

Amy doesn’t walk him through what each trinket is, anymore. There’s a score of ceramic children on a shelf in the living room, above a row of books, and all Simon knows of them is that they’re ugly. She’d be downright pissed off for him thinking so, if she were here.

The manager of the Save ‘N’ Shop grudgingly gives Simon a stack of boxes left over from their most recent delivery, and he refolds them on the carpet in the living room. He sets the boxes on the sofa, wraps figurines carefully in newspaper, slots books together like puzzle pieces.

He stands in front of Amy’s bedroom, empty box in hand, for what must be minutes.

The box goes back in the living room, and the door to Amy’s room stays shut.

Kieren comes by in the evening, opens his mouth on  _ hello _ and leaves his jaw hanging as he takes in the empty shelves, the boxes stacked against the far wall. “Redecorating?”

Simon can’t determine if he’s upset or not from his tone, his expression. He watches Kieren cross over to the sofa, lift the flaps of the box with the ceramic children in, hum under his breath. He unwraps one of the figurines and lets out a soft laugh, from his core. Sad. “Christ, but this is hideous.”

Simon feels it in his stomach, a longing for Amy’s outrage. For an aggrieved half-shout, a hand smacking Kieren in the shoulder before she cradled the figurine in careful hands and told them both off.

When nothing happens, Kieren wraps the figurine up, settles it back in the box. “Have you done your room yet?” and Simon hasn’t, so he shakes his head. He follows Kieren in and watches him reach for the cross on the wall, behind the bed.

“Not that.”

Kieren turns to him, the cross in his hands like an overlarge rosary. “What, really?”

Simon takes it from him, rehanging it with care.

“You don’t think that’s — well, weird? Morbid, definitely. We’ll just keep this symbol of ritualistic murder on the walls, then.”

Simon shakes his head, smiles at him in a way he’s not sure reaches his eyes. “It’s a reminder.”

“Of ritualistic murder.”

Simon lays his palm flat against the base of the cross. He imagines the wood is cool, the press of the edges into his skin. He’s not told Kieren about the graveyard, about why he was there, about where he went off to. He’d intended to, at the GP before Philip had rushed in — had felt the need to absolve himself in the presence of Kieren Walker, who’d overcome his own rabidity. Who’d likely not make jokes about ritualistic murder if he knew what had been planned.

“Of sacrifice and redemption,” is what Simon says, a coward’s answer when so much could be said instead, and Kieren rolls his eyes and walks back into the living room.

==

 

Simon remembers his first sip of wine, nearly twelve years old, his dad smiling, telling him to get a taste of it so he didn’t spit communion back in Father O’Henry’s face. It’d been cheap wine, Simon knows that now, dissimilar to what he would later sip from the chalice held in Father O’Henry’s wrinkled hands, but as a child he’d been wrapped up in the symbolism of what was to come. It’d tasted coppery and he’d choked on it, and his parents had laughed good-naturedly, handed him his mug of milk so he could rid his mouth of the taste of blood.

When he drank from the chalice in Father O’Henry’s wrinkled hands, he’d tasted nothing but wine. Christ was nowhere to be found in it.

==

 

Simon has an open invitation to Sunday brunch at the Walker home, which surprises him and leaves him with a general sense of unease, both. He’s not sure he likes them, spends too much of his time struggling with knowing what to say, how to act, or the proper way to turn down the offer of food, to concentrate on anything resembling affection. He’s not sure they like  _ him _ , or if they’re simply operating on social obligation — you took a bullet for our son and so we  _ must _ be polite.

It takes him a while to accept their invitation. A month has gone by before he darkens their table, seated next to Kieren with empty plates before the both of them, Sue asking Steve about his day at work, Jem more quiet than Simon’s ever seen her, even when rigid with fear.

He doesn’t pray, because he doesn’t eat. But it’s strange, to be at a table without starting with bowed heads, joined hands. They serve the food, tuck in, and amens echo in Simon’s head.

“Kieren tells us you’re turning the bungalow into a bachelor pad,” Sue says, implication-heavy, and Kieren squawks a  _ mum _ at her.

Simon looks at him, waits for a sign as to how he should react beyond the nonsensical embarrassment at the base of his spine. Amy told him about Rick Macy, or as much as she’d gathered, and Simon hasn’t asked further, understands keeping things close to the chest.

Kieren’s covered his eyes with a hand, but he’s smiling, and Simon feels his own face mirroring the expression.

“It’s not a bachelor pad,” Kieren says. Jem  _ ohhhs _ under her breath, and Simon thinks if he weren’t sitting between them Kieren might try and kick her. Kieren sobers almost immediately though, his pale eyes closing when he ducks his head. Simon aches to touch him.

“Amy wouldn’t have wanted me to live with her ghost,” Simon says, and next to him, Kieren makes a quiet, hurt noise.

==

 

He misses her, as though she were one of his senses. The world is dulled without her, and his body hasn’t yet compensated for the loss.

She wasn’t a fan of scripture, preferred the  _ good news of the undead _ , but he takes his well-worn bible with him to the cemetery, sits beside her gravestone and reads from Proverbs, Revelation. Tells her the story of Esther, who was brave, beloved.

He meets Philip, once, their visits finally overlapping, and Philip sits on the other side of her grave, fingers dipped into the earth above her coffin, and tells him to keep reading.

==

 

Kieren stalks into the bungalow when Simon answers the door, holding something in one hand, the other gesturing at the room. “I can’t  _ believe _ you.”

“About what?”

Kieren holds a —  _ Simon’s _ — bible out between them, and Simon takes it with careful hands.

“D’you know where I found that?”

He’d forgotten it there, the other day. Only remembers doing so now. “Amy’s grave.”

“Amy’s —  _ right _ , that’s right, filled with your notes and bookmarks and. This bullshit got her  _ killed _ , and you’ve decided to.” Kieren drags a hand through his hair, clenches the other into a fist at his side. “How can you still read that?”

Disgust flies from Kieren’s mouth like so much spittle, and Simon lets it sink under his skin and into his bones. The bible’s heavy in his hands. He’d last read through the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving the furnace, of faith overcoming the boundaries of the flesh. Simon’s always been fond of it, even as a child.

“I was raised Catholic,” he says, and it draws Kieren up short, his expression settling into cautious confusion. Simon had relished that reaction as a young man, when another squatter had stumbled upon his tarnished St Nicholas medal; or when he’d kicked Ravi out of bed after a thoroughly blitzed shag, slurring about how it was a sin to lie with a man as one did with a woman. God, he was a prick.

“Mass every Sunday, sometimes vigils if Dad was up to it.” He runs his fingers down the gilded outer edge of the bible in his hands. “I threw my first bible away.”

When Father O’Henry had passed, he was replaced by a younger priest, fresh from seminary and as by-the-book as they come, who’d told Simon to confess his sins or be barred from communion. Simon, who at seventeen couldn’t bring himself to care enough to be angry, had still sat across from Father McDougall in the confessional and calmly torn pages from the bible in his hands, left them spread around the interior like refuse. Father McDougall’d been livid, but he’d had no recourse that would actually affect Simon.

Dad had sent him to his room, hadn’t yelled, and Simon had listened to them talk about him downstairs, their sharp voices easily carrying, both of them furious but hopeless about it. Simon had lain in bed and felt closer to his parents in that moment than he had in years.

Simon opens the bible in his hands, the pages easily falling open to Revelations, the spine worn there. “Mum gave me this one before I left for the States. She thought I’d want to have it.”

Kieren’s still watching him closely, like he’s figuring Simon out. Simon wants to hold him close when he gets that expression on his face, ask Kieren what he sees — if he could share his insight.

“They buried me with it, in an inside pocket of my suit jacket, with a slip of paper in Daniel. Someone had marked chapter 9, verse 9. It’s not like anyone knew I’d have a chance to read it, but they’d felt it proper.” Simon cycles back through the book, easy because he’s left the slip of paper in, as a reminder. “To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him,” he reads, and when he looks up, Kieren’s stubborn, bordering on upset, achingly beautiful.

“For someone who preaches letting go of shame, you’re absolute shit at it.” What should be biting comes out sad, and Simon closes his bible, holds it at his side, stands still when Kieren steps towards him, all of his anger gone. Kieren takes the bible from his hand — Simon lets him take it, lets Kieren slot in between him and what he believes, wants him there — and sets it on one of the emptied shelves before sliding his fingers through Simon’s.

“Take your own daft advice for once,” Kieren says, and Simon lifts their hands up, kisses Kieren’s knuckles, drinks in the shy turn of Kieren’s head towards the ground. Kieren will drop it, for now, let Simon distract him. Simon’s so, so grateful.

==

 

His parents never fought, didn’t raise their voices at each other. When they’d argue, they’d do so with soft, forked tongues, with a series of jabs meant to bruise but never draw blood. If Simon hadn’t been sent to his room — he was normally the cause of their arguments — he’d watch them whip words back and forth, like the dinner table was a chess board. He’d absorb the phrasing, the cadence of their speech, two orators trying to convince the other of their opinion.

When he was eight, his dad was worried that he didn’t seek out friends, that he read too much — a laughable comment, given that it was his dad who’d handed him books on books on books, who’d plied him with nursery rhymes so that it’d be an easy transition to poetry later on. His mum had pointed that out, and the argument had nearly devolved into one about what counted as great literature.

When he was eleven, they both worried over his teacher’s notes, that he was a kind boy, but prone to dark thoughts; that he didn’t possess a violent nature but had looked her straight in the eye and told her he hadn’t cared one whit about the death of Charlie the classroom’s hamster, that it was probably happier now without everyone poking at it. It was likely diseased, his dad had said, and even at eleven Simon had agreed — it had been alive, after all.

When he was fifteen, his mum was worried because of his music, because of his clothes, because he rarely left the house and when he did it was to stir up trouble. She’d grown up on a farm, honest work, and she thought that maybe it’d be beneficial for him if he had something to do with his hands. What neither of them knew was that Simon had found things to do with his hands, had found the fags passed under desks before lunch, had found Lillian Turner’s mouth and breasts and then her brother William’s narrow hips and long fingers.

His dad said he had an artist’s soul, that he needed room to discover himself.

At fifteen, Simon didn’t discover himself in books, in coursework, in the stretch of skin between Willie Turner’s navel and his cock. He thought he did,  _ knew _ he’d discovered something when Willie introduced him to Chandi and David, who shared their weed and got him high for the first time. They’d all lain down on the shag carpet in the basement of Chandi’s house, Simon’s head pillowed on Willie’s thigh while Dav fondly called them poofs, and Simon had felt something, had stared up at the ceiling and felt the swell in his chest that Father O’Henry talked about in mass.

He’d bought their entire bag off of them, sat on the back steps of his house when he was supposed to be at school, smoked until he felt God looking down at him. Managed that once a week, until his parents found out about his truancy, came down as hard as they ever did on him at that time, forbade him from seeing Chandi or Dav or Willie, encouraged him because he felt a sharp  _ thrill _ when he’d sneak out and see them anyway.

The thing with Willie didn’t last, couldn’t have, Lillian bitter as only a fifteen-year-old girl can be, telling their parents about Simon turning her brother into a shirtlifter. It got back to Simon’s parents and they sat around the dinner table that night, silent, as though they wanted him to confess. But Simon knew asking for forgiveness for something you weren’t repentant of was worse than confessing in the first place, so he kept his mouth shut, and they didn’t try again. Simon wondered if they were too happy he’d had friends to care beyond that.

When he was seventeen, he ran away from home, sneaked into Dav’s bedroom and tried his first hit of cocaine, sucked down Dav’s cock because Dav was blasted and didn’t care what bits Simon had. Simon had always loved how highs mixed up with the chemicals of orgasm in his brain, and  _ this _ high — he loved how thin his skin felt, how his soul was too big for his body. He laughed for what felt like forever when Dav blacked out after he came, pocketed the rest of Dav’s bag and slipped out the front door, the taste of semen still in his mouth and his mind blown wide. He’d been grounded once his dad dragged him home, but they couldn’t tether him to the earth, with what now coursed through his veins.

When he was nineteen, his mum asked him what was  _ wrong _ with him, she only wanted to help. They’d brought him up as best they could, they didn’t know what else they could do, would he only  _ tell them _ , talk to them like he did as a child, she felt like she didn’t  _ know  _ him anymore. He hated himself, for making her cry. It was the first firm emotion he’d felt sober in years, and he carried it with him.

When he was twenty-two, along with a new bible his mum slipped him a check writ out for four hundred pounds, told him he should use it to make himself happy, whatever he thought that meant. His dad dropped a duffel bag on the floor of his bedroom but he was way ahead of him, had stuffed a week’s worth of clothes, toiletries, a Walkman, four cassettes, and 5 grams of coke into a backpack.

He flew into Newark, New Jersey, and breathed in the scent of pollution and seawater, did a line in the loo near the baggage claim. He traded a blowjob for a ride into the city, stumbled out into what the driver told him was Chelsea.

He felt desperate and invincible and transcendent.

==

 

Simon rarely leaves the bungalow except to head over to the Walkers, has no reason to go outside, no errands to run. It’s how he doesn’t know about the new graffiti, courtesy of Zoe no doubt, held in high-esteem now that Simon’s disgraced.

Kieren pounds on the front door in the evening, brushes past Simon once he’s let in, and Simon thinks of the night so many weeks ago, Kieren’s mousse smudged, his expression lost and certain all at once — and Kieren looks incandescent now, his golden hair haloing his bone china face, his mouth drawn into a sneer. Jem teases Kieren sometimes, about the spiked leather jacket and army boots still in his closet, his _punk_ _phase_ she says, and Simon thinks now that this is the look Kieren must have worn during those years, indifferent dismissal and fierce determination, somehow twisted together.

“D’you know what it says on the window?”

“No…?” Simon moves to draw the curtains back… there’s spray paint on the glass, lettering too large and messy to read from inside.

“’If we say we’ve not sinned, we’re lying to ourselves, and the truth is not in us’,” Kieren recites inaccurately, though Simon still knows the reference, and he watches Kieren throw his arms out at his sides like an American televangelist for emphasis. “I thought you were done with them.”

_ I’ll never be done with them, _ Simon thinks. Says, “Why would you think that?”

Kieren drops his arms, narrows his eyes. “They had an actual  _ showdown _ in the cemetery — Jem told me about it later. They had Blue Oblivion, kept talking about the  _ Second Rising _ . They were ready to fight the whole damn village.”

_ It would’ve been their right _ , Simon thinks. Says, “The Second Rising will bring about vast changes. There are many who wouldn’t want it to happen.”

Kieren’s mouth puckers. “It’s not  _ going _ to happen, it’s this fantasy nutters like Maxine Martin have come up with because they don’t like what they got in the First Rising—”

“It should have happened,” Simon says. Kieren stops short, mouth snapping shut, and he looks at Simon as though he’s grown another head. Simon shrugs a shoulder, thinks about how he should have told Kieren sooner why he was in the cemetery too, should’ve made it clear what wrongs he’s committed before Kieren made a place for Simon in his heart. “It would have, if I’d have fulfilled my mission.”

“What  _ mission _ ?”

Simon should have directed Kieren away from this, even if only for an hour — given himself time to savor Kieren’s presence, memorize the muted rush that accompanied Kieren’s hands on his skin. Allowed himself to be selfish.

“I went into the city to meet with one of my fellow disciples, to hear the words of the Prophet.”

Kieren’s already-skeptical expression twists with frustration, and Simon rushes on, he needs to get this out or he never will, it’ll be like ripping off a plaster, though this time the pain will last and last.

“I was sent to Roarton to determine the identity of the First Risen, and after that lunch with your family, I knew it was you.” Kieren squawks out in disagreement, but Simon can’t have him interrupt, not now. “I knew it was you, and when I went into the city I was told that I was chosen to help bring about the Second Rising.”

“The Second Rising is a  _ sick joke _ , how can you  _ believe _ —”

“The First Risen would be sacrificed, in the twelfth hour of the twelfth day of the twelfth month, and our brothers and sisters would rise redeemed and glorious, and we would no longer suffer at the hands of the living.”

Kieren’s silent then, and Simon watches his eyes widen as he puts it together, and he’s so grateful that he doesn’t have to say it, doesn’t have to admit to what he’d almost done, as though his own mouth’s not forming the words makes it any less than what it is:

“You were going to kill me.”

Simon grimaces, wants to break Kieren’s gaze but forces himself not to. “Yes.”

“You were going to… is that why you were at the cemetery in the first place? You, what, changed your mind at the last minute?” Kieren’s voice is steadily raising in pitch, and when Simon takes a step toward him, Kieren takes one back, then stops, brings his feet back together and clenches his fists at his sides, standing firm. “You just — decided not to?”

“I realized it wasn’t worth it.”

“You realized —  _ Christ _ , Simon, so I should be glad you  _ like _ me then.” Kieren rubs a hand across his eyes, looks off to the side, twists his hand up in his hair before letting it fall. “So if I’d been anybody else you would have, would have stabbed them in the head and then felt _ so stupid _ when nothing happened.” Kieren laughs, and the sound digs into Simon’s chest with claws.

And then Kieren goes quiet and still, and Simon can’t follow the slide of expressions on his face, anger to something to something else. Simon feels fracturing ice settle in his chest and he takes another step forward, reaches out but doesn’t touch Kieren, speaks soft and true, “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up,” Kieren says, his voice breaking, “I’m so angry with you.”

Which is what Simon expected, but he also expected Kieren to tell Simon he wanted nothing to do with him, to have  _ left _ by now — he expected Kieren to be disappointed in him.

“I’m so  _ angry _ with you,” Kieren says again, and he steps into Simon’s space and tugs him in by the front of his jumper, takes Simon completely by surprise, shoves their mouths together in a kiss that Simon swears to God he can feel.

==

 

It made him a cliché, but New York was another world.

He wound up in an expat-friendly hostel where he shared a room with a French chainsmoker named Philippe. The other occupant, a tall Swede with eyes like clouds, gave Simon a onceover and asked to be moved to another room.

Philippe told Simon that Tor was trying to get clean, was three months sober, and that Simon looked absolutely shitfaced. Later, Philippe moaned about Tor, how he’d never been able to have fun at home because he felt like he had to  _ support  _ him; then he badgered Simon into sharing his stash, cooed  _ mon petit pédé _ into Simon’s ear when he tried heroin for the first time.

Philippe was a bitchy optimist, his words, and he hated sex but loved kissing, was overly-affectionate when high and told Simon they weren’t compatible,  _ absolutement _ , but encouraged Simon to wank while he was in the room because he wasn’t  _ dead _ . He led Simon down poorly-lit hallways into clubs, introduced him to his friends, told him who to avoid — threw a shoe at Simon’s head when Simon fell in with José, who was  _ expressly _ to be avoided.

He’d dragged Simon to mass the Sunday morning after Simon had come back to their room smelling like  _ Spanish jizz _ , he’d insisted, and Simon tried to piece together all the bits he knew about Philippe, tried to understand him in spite of the contradictions. He said as much, his voice over-loud in the vestibule of St Columba Church, when Philippe dipped his fingertips into the holy water and crossed himself — Philippe called him  _ stupide _ .

Simon had sat in the pew next to him, had knelt and repeated the prayers and taken communion and felt the distinct absence of God. When Philippe overdosed the next Thursday, Simon stumbled back into the church, fell to his knees in the last row of pews and prayed, actually prayed, the rosary he’d stolen from Philippe’s trunk shaking in his hands — told whoever the hell was listening that Philippe  _ believed _ , that if anyone cared he’d live, that he didn’t deserve to die, that Simon loved him.

When Philippe died anyway, Simon set a lighter to the rosary and flushed the remains, cursed God in every way he could think of, and when Tor came into the room snarling late that night,  _ the toilet’s clogged you bög _ , Simon offered him a needle with the remains of Philippe’s heroin and together they nearly overdosed, themselves. Tor moved back in and loathed Simon, for the drugs and for the men he’d bring back and for Philippe, who hadn’t used like that until Simon.

It made Simon feel equal parts numb and so very hatefully alive.

 

==

 

Kieren doesn’t leave after Simon’s confession.

He kisses Simon, hard and sure, and Simon goes weak-kneed from it, curls his hands around Kieren’s neck and slides his thumbs across Kieren’s jaw, holds him tightly and carefully because he’s precious.

“You’re an idiot,” Kieren says, and Simon licks across Kieren’s lips, coaxes Kieren’s tongue into his mouth, keeps his eyes open so he can see the contrast of Kieren’s lashes against his pale cheekbones, sucks on Kieren’s tongue to hear him moan, soft and low.

Kieren pulls away too soon, Simon almost chasing after his lips, but Kieren curves his palm around Simon’s cheek and swallows, shakes his head. “I need you to tell me, why you’d… even consider it. I can’t…” Kieren smiles without humor, looks away from Simon, over his shoulder, runs his teeth across his bottom lip. “You’re the second boyfriend I’ve had who was supposed to kill me.”

Simon doesn’t hate Rick Macy. He’d pitied him -- and after he’d learned what happened, felt distantly grateful his own dad had only kicked him out onto his arse; he’d appreciated him for who he was to Kieren and, perversely, for his role in making Kieren who he is now; but he’d thought he’d never understand it, his seemingly-constant drive to please his father, his friends, to fit in. Simon does find it alarming now, the parallels. Has wondered during late sleepless nights if he should expect a knife in the back of his skull, wielded by the hand of the Prophet.

“I couldn’t,” he says, dropping his hands from Kieren’s neck to his slim hips.

“No shit,” Kieren snaps, his face contorting with it. “When’d you realize that?”

Kieren pulls his hand from Simon’s face but Simon doesn’t let him move away, keeps him close, his fingers pressing into the dip of Kieren’s back. “You didn’t want to hurt your dad. I’ve never seen… you stood there, and every doubt I’d had, every selfish thought lurking in the back of my mind came to the forefront and I knew it wasn’t worth it, your being dead.”

“So it was selfish, you taking a bullet in the back for me.” Kieren’s still prickly, but he’s not pressing against Simon’s hold on him anymore.

“It’s one of the most selfish things I’ve ever done,” Simon says, and Kieren so rarely takes him at his word, rolls his eyes, pokes holes in his persona — but this time, Simon knows Kieren grasps the sincerity of the claim.

“But  _ why _ …?” Kieren asks, and Simon doesn’t know how to say any of it.

==

 

Simon remembers the first month following Philippe’s death in brief beams of clarity surrounded by creeping darkness. He knows he and Tor were kicked out of the hostel, no money to pay for rent after they’d spent it all on drugs. They stayed with a woman Tor had infrequently slept with, Tor in her bed and Simon on the sofa.

Lilac’s vice of choice was alcohol. She called Simon  _ Irish car bomb _ , and Simon hated her silently, reveled in having a target at which to direct the seething tar inside of him. It didn’t take long for him to lose his welcome there as well, for Tor to shove him and the duffel full of dirty clothes out into the hallway, keeping the rest of Simon’s coke,  _ Goddamn him _ .

A parishioner at St Columba directed him to what she called the “intake center”, where they asked him questions about his life, about his drug habit, about what he needed. He needed shit-all save a roof over his head, which they wouldn’t give him without his signing up for their  _ meetings _ , so he did, showed up on time and talked about his mum and dad as though it affected him. Met with a caseworker who got him a job cleaning tables at an Irish pub, God help him. Laid out on a cot in an off-white room at night with 30-odd other miserable degenerates, some who stunk to high hell.

He quit using, didn’t have the money for it, shook under a wool blanket instead of sleeping most nights. Managed not to get fired. Wrote his parents a letter, posted it and never knew if it got to them. He’d lied in it, mostly, about how lovely New York was, how it treated him well, how glad he was to be there. Told them the truth about an old vet he’d met, who told him the best way to get over withdrawal was through exercise.

He took up running, ran until his lungs hurt, until he had to stop because his body shuddered with coughing. It was a respite, to do something that forced him to focus purely on the physical. The vet, an old Oriental man named Frank with gnarled hands and a long greying ponytail, asked him if he’d felt high off of it yet, and Simon didn’t let himself dismiss the idea — ran until he did, until the chemicals in his brain did  _ something _ , made the sun filtering through the leaves in Central Park feel like God’s fingers brushing against his cheeks.

His caseworker, thrilled at his discovery of an outlet she considered healthy, directed him towards the McBurney YMCA. He took up weights. He met Ravi when the man stepped up to spot for him and mocked his junkie arms. After a week and a half of arm reps, Ravi took him out for drinks. Simon tried to invite himself up to Ravi’s after, and Ravi affectionately called him a slut, said he’d meet him the following Thursday.

Simon’s caseworker was less thrilled when he moved out of the shelter two months later and into Ravi’s flat, said something under her breath about AIDS, and Simon flicked her off and walked out of the office. He passed the abysmally named Parish of Our Lady of the Scapular on his way back towards Ravi’s —  _ their _ flat, and when he walked in the door between the stylized Α and Ω,   _ I am the alpha and the omega,  _ clever, he stopped.

He stood inside the door and gazed into the chapel, and felt… blessedly content.

 

==

 

“I’ve always believed in God,” Simon says. Kieren’s forehead furrows and Simon wants to smooth his thumbs across the skin. “Distantly — as though He were an architect, had placed everything and everyone and then stepped back once it was done.”

“So life’s one giant set of tipping Dominos.”

“Or a Rube Goldberg machine.” Simon feels a smile tug at his mouth, wholly without humor. “It would’ve been simpler had I been an atheist, if I didn’t believe. It’s easier to think there’s nothing there, than to understand that God simply doesn’t care about you.”

Kieren huffs a laugh, looks away from Simon. When Simon follows his line of sight, he’s staring at the painting of Christ that Simon moved from his bedroom into the living room. Kieren says, “I think you enjoy being a martyr,” and Simon feels as though Kieren’s placed a weight on his chest.

“How do you mean?” he says, the words pressed out of him.

“Who believes in a God that doesn’t care about them? That isn’t  _ there _ ?” Kieren’s incensed, his lips parted, ready to respond to whatever Simon says. Combative.

Simon aches for him, wishes Kieren had something Simon could use as a reference.  _ How do you explain faith? How do you explain the taste of salt? _

“I’m sorry—”

“Stop saying that,” Kieren snaps, and then he drags a hand across his face and up into his hair, and his shoulders shudder with his unnecessarily heavy exhalation. “I don’t understand you.”

Simon remains quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> as it says in the notes, this is an abandoned/unfinished peace -- but i liked it to much too let it sit on google drive for another year.
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
